3:45 AM

Woman: Well I don't know about pictures.

Man: Sweetheart, you're shaving your fucking head ANYWAYS, what's to be ashamed of?

Woman: Yeah, but I'm not a punk.

Man: It's not about being a punk; it's about the process of having your head shaved.

Woman: Yeah but you're not just shaving it, you're doing a series of intermediate hairstyles that I wouldn't be caught dead wearing, and I don't really want some sort of record of this.

Man: Look, the fact that you are letting me shave your head already indicates two things. One, you trust me. Two, you believe me when I say that your sex is inherent, in your soul, that I'll fuck you and want to fuck you regardless of your hairstyle. Three, you have a sexy skull; your hair is an additional bonus item, not a necessity...

Woman: Listen, darling, you have to understand me. I love this night, and drinking with you, I don't question the drugs at all, and I don't think that shaving my head is wrong. I'm excited about tomorrow, about the two of us being bald and naked together. Very Freudian, very THX1138, it's actually getting me wet right now. But please, darling, let's take the shots on full bald, and no need for the faux Mohawk that I was never seen in public in?

Man: You remember the scene, when THX's flat mate is asking him if he's taking his drugs? There`s a short time when the two of them are experiencing real love and affection and sex, without sedation, before the other guy reports him....

Woman: There is something about the baldness that really TURNS.ME.ON.

Man: Well why do you think I wanted to shave you? It's so hot... Let's rub skulls, umhh...

Woman: I've worn my hair long like that for... oh, I can't remember, since I was a schoolgirl...

Man: And this serves as a symbol in so many ways, and your consent in submitting to being shaved makes me love you that much more strongly. Your baldness strips you of your femininity, and confirms my infatuation. It brings contrast to your breasts, your hips, the disjuncture excites me... No, please, don't fight; just let me rub it on your thigh...

Woman: But you'll give me your injection regardless, you naughty boy. What ever made me consent to this madness? I have to teach tomorrow!

Man: Tell them that you've found true love. Or tell them it's the new you.

Woman: How long are these mushrooms supposed to last?

Man: For the rest of your life, meine Liebling. It will never be the same again.

This one is also old and brittle, it comes from hulver, where I parked texts for a little while. Texts shuffling around, now here now there, someday there will have to be new ones, I'll have to stop playing archivist and start playing writer...

Tashkent International Airport

summer 2001

In 1966 large parts of Tashkent were leveled in a massive earthquake. The flaking paintwork and chipped floor tiles of Tashkent International airport look about 30 years old, and the style is bland, monolithic Soviet 70's, which suggests the structure is post-quake. But as you ride the creaking 30 year old bus / cattle car across the tarmac to be confronted by the rusting, crumbling bare metal frame of this boxy soulless building you can easily imagine that the earthquake was last week. This place is only one example of this most pathetic Soviet legacy to newly independent Uzbekistan - huge, half finished and never ending construction projects, buildings that are so ugly no-one seems to really wants them to be completed. In most of the world there is a clear distinction between construction and demolition, but in Central Asia they have learned to sit on the fence. Finishing them won't make them any better, and then there would be all those extra costs to furnish and heat them. Welcome to Tashkent, and mind your head.

Throughout Central Asia, procedures at airports seem haphazard, ad-hoc, made up as the officials go along. It's as if they never put someone through customs before, never got people off a bus and onto a plane. Which of the 28 security officials will break away from the huddle in the corner to come over and ignore the x-ray machine? Will they ask for a customs declaration? Oops, can't, seem to be fresh out of those. Out on the tarmac, should the mob of redundant police smoke cigarettes to the left or right of the gangway? Ooh, what an innovative idea, let's check boarding passes! But that opens a whole host of other difficult choices and decisions; shall we rip them in half, giving the passenger a stub? Just collect them? What the hell, let's just let everybody on and see if there are enough seats for them. If not, the surly Russian stewardess can come and scream at the passengers until nobody gets off, and after all the only real problem is that the pilots have to squeeze extra close and personal past the standees as they board.

In Tashkent there's a fairly broad selection of cheap crap available to tourists. There are extremely low quality Chinese knock-offs of Disney stuffed animals, and suspiciously new looking Soviet-era badges and pins. The 8" bowie knives look like they are made in someone's basement on a rotary grinder, and I suppose they probably are. In lieu of jewels on the tin sheaths there are dabs of fluorescent ink from a highlighter. They would make a serious collector gag, but at about $1-$3 a pop they are one of the more popular souvenir items.

So we are passing through customs with these, and after two bags with big monster knives go through the x-ray without a hitch, we collect our luggage and wait for the third of us to pass through. Ooh, how exciting, he has seen a knife! "Have you got a knife in there?" he cunningly questions the third teacher. She is a sweet, harmless little 22 year old, wide-eyed and first time out of Kyrgyzstan. When he asks her she immediately says, yes, yes, it's just a souvenir. The customs guy takes it, sits there thinking to himself and holding it in his hands, as if no tourist has ever left Tashkent with one of these cheesy knives until today, indeed as if he himself has never seen a knife before. Perhaps he is pondering whether or not it counts as a weapon.

"Are there knives in there, too?" he asks, pointing to the two little carry on bags that we are holding, that he has just cleared through security. He must have been too busy sitting in glum indolence to watch the screen when our bags passed through.

Occasionally the security guards are in a more playful mood, at least in Bishkek: on the way here, when I looked at my bag in the x-ray screen, over his shoulder, the guard at the security check pointed to the dark spot in the center of my briefcase, and with a big smile told me it was a bomb. No, it's just the buckle, I said, and how we both laughed at his witticism.

Back in Tashkent, the other young teacher / potential terror threat takes her knife out and hands it to security. I figure he'll be happy discovering two, and I might need mine if the stewardess starts picking on me, so I stay mum.

"Let's just leave them," says the first teacher. After all, we are all a bit antsy because we haven't yet realized that the huge clock in the main hall is broken, and that we have an hour rather than 14 minutes before departure. What a perfect scam, I think to myself. The customs guys can collect these knives by the tonne and then sell them back to the tourist hawkers. Maybe there are really only a hundred of these knives in Tashkent, traveling in a closed loop from Tashkent International to the stalls on Broadway, into the hands of the tourists who complete the circle, instinctively delivering them like carrier pigeons back to their owners in airport security. Eventually they will count as antiques, so the staff will be able to take them from those tourists who have had the foresight to stow their treasures in their checked-in luggage, too.

But it's not to be. After much deliberation in consultation with his colleagues, he decides we need to put the knives into checked-in luggage. He's getting soft.


This was also an old dead text written a long time ago. Someday soon i will run out of old texts, and what will I do then?

"The Best" LSD

This might have happened in the year 2000.

The main shopping streets to your right as you come out of Centraal Station are one of the areas the lowest-rung pushers and rip-off artists hang out in, especially in the evenings when the shops are all closed and shutterred. There is one particular guy, a short and stocky Guyanese, who has been around for the last couple of years and seems to be one of the big men among the two-bit scammers.

I guess it goes without saying, every guidebook says it, and now I'll say it: DO NOT try to buy drugs out on the streets in Amsterdam. I wanted to buy a batch of LSD, which as far as I know is not available in any stores, so like a bloody idiot I found myself stumbling tired and vulnerable at four in the morning, looking to buy 10 hits of acid from the street toughs.

As soon as one of them sees a taker, a chump, they all start converging. They speak English, Dutch, and Guyanese, and will switch to whichever you don't understand. Before I know it I have about 6 Guyanese street folk pressing me from all sides, with this mean looking ringleader doing a sweet, well-rehearsed hustle on me every step of the way.

RIPOFF I There aren't 10 hits, there are 8.

RIPOFF II "It's the best, man, it's the best," I am continually assured throughout the transaction. He also offerred me "the best" cocaine, "the best" MDA, and "the best" Extasy. It was, it later turned out, the weakest, shittiest acid I have ever had in my life. In fact, it seemed to have about the same effect as eating a small bit of non-LSD-coated paper.

RIPOFF III This is the real honest-to-God "I fucked you" part of the ripoff. As I have my wallet out, and count out 80 Guilder for him, he makes a nice quick grab and helps himself to one hundred more.

Like a pack of wild dogs they run off after their alpha male. In the blink of an eye they are gone, all screaming at one another, tearing at the big man for one of my bills. I suppose he gave the 10's out to eight of his lieutenants, and kept the 100 to himself.

And I'm standing there like the most moronic chump ever to walk the earth...

Citizens of the Internet! Hear me today, and learn from my extreme idiocy! Let me repeat: DO NOT try to buy drugs on the streets of Amsterdam.

This stale text was produced long ago, originally posted on k5.

Communist Pillow Talk

Joining the communist vanguard is a win-win situation: if the revolution comes, you can be among the ones selecting rather than the ones selected, and if it turns out that communist theory is just a big pile of crap, well you haven't lost anything.

Therefore, I hereby officially declare myself to be a member of the communist vanguard!

CUT TO: interior bedroom, night. Communist member BRAD is lying in bed with his communist girlfriend, BETTY. They are in a post-coital cuddle / chat.

BETTY: Tell me again about after the communist revolution, sweetheart?
BRAD: What, about the workers and the new system of distribution and production?
BETTY: No, the part about our house.
BRAD: Well, as we'll be at the very front of the communist vanguard in the glorious revolution, I'll be pretty much calling the shots...
BETTY: With Blake and Tim, right?
BRAD: I told you, Betty, just because they're part of the local committee doesn't mean they'll have an important role at the national and international level. I'll probably keep them here in their district posts.
BETTY: You were going to tell me about the house.
BRAD: Yeah, and you interrupted! (BRAD kisses BETTY's forehead and strokes her hair) So, when I'm Chairman of the Central committee, we'll get to ride in limousines to all sorts of important places, and we'll live in a big palace with maids and assistants to take care of all the chores of everyday life.
BETTY: (staring lovingly into BRAD's eyes) Will we have a big screen TV?
BRAD: (laughs) Babe, you'll have the biggest god-damn wide screen TV on the planet!
(BETTY kisses BRAD passionately, on the lips. Fade out.)

Still just repeating old shit from k5, my apologies. Stale texts here! Come get your stale texts, bargain basement prices, stale texts right here folks!

Hippy Pillow Talk

CUT TO: Exterior, large park, night. Hippy BRAD is quietly tapping on his bongos, wrapped in a large poncho with hippy girlfriend BETTY. BETTY is topless, and rolling a joint. OFF SCREEN LAUGHTER and PSYCHEDELLIC MUSIC suggest that they are at a love-in.

BETTY: Tell me again about after the revolution, sweetie?
BRAD: What, you mean after everyone tunes in and drops out, how there will be no more war and hate, only peace and brotherly love?
BETTY: No, the part about the drugs.
BRAD: Oh, well, like I was saying before, we'll be able to get high all the time because dope will be free.
BETTY: (confused) So, like, Raoul is just going to give it away?
BRAD: No, silly! (BRAD ruffles BETTY's hair, and kisses her cheek) We won't need dealers anymore, cause there won't be any laws or money, and we'll all just hang out here in the park all day.
BETTY: (still confused) But someone will still have to grow it, right? Won't they need money to feed their families, and buy clothes, and all that stuff? And don't we already hang out here all day in the park anyways?
BRAD: (hesitates) I never thought of it that way, hmm... Yeah, but I guess food and clothes will be free too, so they all won't need money either, too.
BETTY: But then like won't they all just want to hang out here in the park, like us? Why would they want to grow dope, or make clothes, or cook food, when there's nothing in it for them? (BETTY hands joint to BRAD)
BRAD: (lights joint, tokes repeatedly) Have a hit, baby. Peace and love. (BRAD grins and hands joint to BETTY)
BETTY: This is killer stuff, hey sweetie? (tokes) You gotta ask Raoul if he's got anymore of this Thai shit next time he's around here...

BETTY AND BRAD stare into space, each lost in confused, shallow thoughts. fade out.

My apologies, this is a repeat from a previous source, but I want to archive all my old texts here. Saves me writing anything new for a couple of weeks, while I get settled in... Originally from k5, a couple years back...